This is going to be brief because I'm in Vegas, the conference I have been helping to run is over, and I have a party to go to. But dang it, I still managed to squeeze in an hour on the treadmill and two episodes of Doctor Who because you all matter so much to me, my dear Imaginary Readers. So let's talk extremely briefly about The Three Doctors.

After missing my treadmill session yesterday, I was bound and determined to get it in today. I barely managed it between my main work shift and a working dinner tonight (poor me, I had to go to a fantastical catered dinner with amazing food and live entertainment at the Bellagio, I am sure you are weeping for my plight). That being said, I am truly on my last legs right now. But as I said, I did manage to watch the first two episodes of the very excellent The Three Doctors.

This morning marks a huge milestone all around. For me personally, I weighed in at a new low record since I started this project, which is particularly nice given the frustrating trend last week. For Doctor Who, this morning's viewing was the end of the First Doctor's era. Yes, he is my least favorite Doctor. And yes, although I feel badly about his health struggles in later life, I am not much enamored of his behavior and attitudes on set. Even so, he was enormously popular at the time and was by all accounts a great ambassador to the children who loved the program. His final performance (minus his absence from the third episode due to illness) was spot on, and he was given a superb story to have as his swan song.

So yeah, I've kind of been looking forward to this story. To my mind, the first Doctor has three truly landmark stories: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Tenth Planet. There are others I enjoy more, such as Marco Polo, The Aztecs, or The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but those first three are the ones which are foundational to Doctor Who. The first story, because of course. The second story, because however sick I may be of the Daleks there is no denying that without them there would be no Doctor Who at all. And today's story, because not only does it introduce the second most popular ongoing villains (in my mind it goes Daleks, Cybermen, The Master) but it also introduces the concept of regeneration. Although, it is worth noting that regeneration doesn't get a name for many more years, not until the Third Doctor reaches his end on the Planet of the Spiders. Of course I have been looking forward to today's story, how could I not be?

What's not to love about The Smugglers? It contains betrayal and other turns of plot, it has a massive brawl between the brigands and the militia with our heroes stuck right between, and it contains the puzzle that leads to the buried treasure. As for me today, my five-day moving average has finally moved back in the right direction. This makes me a very happy boy indeed.

Here we are again, with yet another fine example of how good the historical stories can be. The Smugglers is set in 17th century coastal England, with a small town caught between a churchwarden with a secret, a pirate captain and his bloodthirsty crew, and a clueless squire. There is no need for aliens or monsters to create drama, there are plenty of human monsters to be found. In fact, what little actual footage remains of this story only still exist because it was manually edited out of prints in circulation for foreign broadcast -- footage that was cut for being too violent, and then survived in a file while the rest of the print was lost.

Poor Dodo. Sent off to the country to rest towards the end of episode two, and never given a proper goodbye. Nothing more than a quick note sent at the end of episode four saying she is feeling better, has decided to stay in London, and she sends the Doctor her love. That's about as unceremonious a dumping as you can get on this show. She's the first companion to ever just wander off halfway through a story and never bother to come back. I'd say she will be missed but... really, she won't. But hey, lots of other cool stuff happened by the end of The War Machines.

Oh, double-edged sword of the moving average. Today is the second day running where my daily weight is down from the day before, and yet the moving average is higher. But that's ok. At least I am not being mind-controlled by a super-computer (as far as I know). Today I started The War Machines, the final story of the third season of Doctor Who, and it's a good'n. In 1966 the notion of networked computers was definitely floating around out there, but even ARPANET would not actually be constructed for a few more years. It was very cutting edge for the show to do a story about a self-aware mainframe computer forging a global network. It seems like Innes Lloyd's production team has found it's stride, and the show is entering a new Golden Age.

So, yesterday and today are frustrating weight days. I made a lot of sustained progress in the past few weeks, so a rebound was pretty much inevitable. It doesn't make it any less demoralizing, though. Still, yesterday was awful and today was halfway back to where I was, so even though the five-day average has taken a nasty turn upwards, it does seem to be just a normal little hiccup and things are hopefully moving back on track. Lord knows my son will have me out walking around theme parks all weekend, so that will help.

Anyway, about the conclusion to The Savages -- wow, what a rip-roaring back half! You know how the most fun part of a home improvement project is the demolition? Just taking a sledge hammer to those crappy cabinets and smashing them to bits? While, the climax of this story has exactly that kind of glee. On top of that, the story marks the exit of Peter Purves as Steven, and he goes out as a triumphant hero in every possible way.

When I first saw the ridiculous helmets the security officers wore in The Savages, I thought they must have been recycled from the Robomen in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But no, that other ridiculously large headgear was stupid in an entirely different configuration. I don't know why the security officers wear those helmets, they seem incredibly impractical to me, but what do I know? I'm not the one harvesting life force from the local natives like some kind of technocratic vampire.